Two former Parramatta Eels players are accused of harbouring semi-automatic weapons and possessing more than half-a-million dollars in cash after dramatic arrests in Sydney's Centennial Park yesterday.

Maoist rebels kill 23 in central India

A heavily-armed gang of nearly 300 Maoist rebels have killed at least 23 people in an attack on a convoy carrying local Congress party leaders and supporters in central India, police say.

The land mine and gun attack on Saturday was the deadliest in three years and the latest in a long-simmering conflict that pits the insurgents against authorities in the forests of mainly central and eastern India.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who rushed to the Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the ambush, condemned what she called a "cowardly act" by the Maoists.

"It is not an attack on Congress or its leaders, but an attack on democratic values," she told Congress party workers after visiting the injured, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

State Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh, and former state home minister Mahendra Karma - who had set up a controversial anti-Maoist group in 2005 - were among those killed in the assault in a remote tribal belt of the state.

"The total number of dead now stands at 23. We can also confirm that 32 people are injured, most of them seriously," state police director-general Ramniwas, who goes by one name, told AFP.

Former federal minister Vidya Charan Shukla was badly injured and had been airlifted to New Delhi in "serious" condition, said Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who flew to Raipur late Saturday.